


The Night Callie Torres Got Wasted

by maggiemerc



Series: How To Process Plane Crashes And Other Catastrophic Events [4]
Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Angst and Humor, Drinking, F/F, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggiemerc/pseuds/maggiemerc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, so why exactly did Callie not go to Idaho? Here’s one possible reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Callie Torres Got Wasted

They’d been missing for four days. Someone had explained to them as they gathered in a room that the longer they were missing the less likely it was they would live.

She didn’t know where the four day deadline came from. Someone mentioned it or she read it in a book it or it was some vestigial bit of knowledge from her time in the Peace Corps but after four days the chance of recovery dropped drastically.

Which meant her wife was dead. And Mark. And Cristina. And Lexie and Meredith and Derek. They were gone and she was left a single mom.

She pushed through work that day knowing what it meant. And she smiled and acted like she wasn’t falling apart on the inside. Bailey found her charting and told her if she didn’t get the hell out of the hospital and stop trying to work that Bailey would forcibly remove her.

So she picked Sofia up from daycare and avoided looking at Zola and she and her daughter bought a lot of take out and a lot of wine.

A lot of wine.

After Sofia was bathed and in bed Callie tried to sit on the couch and drink.

But the couch got warm or she did so she moved to her room. 

But it smelled like Arizona. 

So she put a cork in her wine bottle and stuck it and another under her arm, grabbed Sofia’s baby monitor and climbed to the roof.

It was a gorgeous view of downtown Seattle. Lights twinkled and the sky was clear and she could see people coming and going from the hospital.

And she drank.

And she drank some more.

And then she pulled her phone out to see if she had any messages and there were none so she called Owen and he said he didn’t know anything yet and asked if he should come by.

And maybe she told him to go to hell.

And maybe she cried.

And maybe she flung her phone off the roof in frustration and curled up against the roof’s wall and cried some more.

And sobbed.

And wept so hard her chest got sore.

And she missed her wife.

God she missed her wife.

 

####

She woke up cold and with a mouth that tasted like really pungent garlic and bad wine. Dawn had to be coming soon because a light dew had fallen and her shirt was soaked through. 

Shit.

Sofia.

She snatched up the monitor and raced downstairs to find Alex Karev standing in her apartment looking worried and confused and relieved all at once.

“Sofia’s sleeping but you weren’t answering and I…”

There weren’t a lot of reasons he’d be standing there. But his reasons were white noise in her ears because there was really only one reason he was there and it sent her to her knees. 

They’d found them and Alex Karev had come to deliver the news. 

Maybe it was the two bottles of wine but she started crying again. She didn’t even have the tears in her any more. It was more dry heaves that she was sure was going to push her dinner up.

Karev shuffled and knelt next to her. “Dude,” he said.

“Just…tell…me,” she gasped.

He squeezed her arms until she was forced to look up.

But he wasn’t scared. He was pulling a smile out of somewhere deep down and it twisted his lips upward. “She’s alive Torres.”

She hiccuped.

“Hunt, Bailey and Webber are on their way to Idaho to assess.”

Callie scrambled up Karev’s body and dashed towards her bedroom. “When do they leave? Do I have time to pack?”

“They’re already gone,” he called from the living room. 

She stopped her hunt for a bag for Arizona and came back to the door.

Karev shrugged, “We tried calling you. I came over after they left to make sure you were okay.”

“But…Karev I have to be there. Arizona is…and Mark!”

“Dude,” he came closer and peered at her like they were in the Pit and she was a patient, “are you drunk?”

She stepped back—and smacked into the door frame. 

“You’re wife doesn’t need you puking on her because you drank too much wine.”

“I know what my wife needs,” she growled in a frustrated rush. “She needs me. There. I’ll just—can you charter a plane at three in the morning? Because I can just charter a plane and then I can be there and—“

He grabbed her arm. “Or you can go get some sleep and get your head together and be ready and sober when your wife calls you in the next few hours.”

She blanched. Her phone was destroyed, probably. Could phones survive being thrown off buildings? How was Arizona supposed to call her?

Karev stuck a phone in her face, “I got my phone too. Owen’s gonna call me from it when he gets there. Okay?”

She nodded numbly.

Karev sighed, “Good. So can you go sleep now?”

“No.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Not…not until I see her Alex.” Callie pushed past him and collapsed onto the couch. “I’ll just…I’ll wait.”

He sighed and sat down next to her.

 

####

“I need…to call…my wife.”

It was hard catching her breath to speak. She’d broken three ribs and had a pulmonary laceration that made every movement impossible without pain. They’d given her a chest tube and had her on oxygen to help and to hopefully keep her out of surgery.

For her chest at least. Her leg would require multiple surgeries—none of which she wanted done by the idiots around her.

Owen took a seat next to her bed. “We’re going to be transporting you all soon.”

“I don’t…care.” She’d tried to call Callie earlier but it had gone straight to voicemail.

Owen pulled his own phone out and made a call. “Did you find her,” he asked someone. He nodded—forgetting that whoever they were they couldn’t see him. Then he smiled at something and handed the phone over.

“Arizona?”

She burst into tears. She couldn’t help it. As soon as she heard Callie’s warm voice the dam shattered. Owen stepped back and discreetly closed the curtains around her bed.

“Hi,” she cried.

“Hi,” Callie whispered back. She didn’t say anything else, but she could hear her breathing. Gasping. Crying. It was just enough to be linked this way. To hear her breath on the phone and know that she’d see her.

“We have…to fly…and Bailey is going to…sedate us.”

“I know. I know. I’ll be at the airport. Okay?”

“O…kay.” She sank back into her pillows in an attempt to find relief. “How’s…Sofia?”

Callie laughed through her tears, “She’s fine sweetheart. She’s fine. I…your plane doesn’t leave for four hours. I can…I’m gonna get on a plane and be there Arizona. I can come back with—“

“No. Please.” She knew Meredith kept hearing the plane crash. In the forest she’d mentioned it in a daze. Asked if anyone else heard it. Arizona didn’t hear the plane crash. She wasn’t sucked back in time and trapped in a nightmare over and over again. But she remembered it. Clearly. And her mind put Callie on the plane with her and she couldn’t fathom that. Couldn’t fathom what would happen. “Just…I’ll see you…at the airport.”

“I love you. Okay? I love you—“ Callie was a broken record. Repeating the words like she’d never get to say them again and Arizona tried not to sob at the sound, but tears raced down her cheeks and soaked the front of her gown anyways.

“I love you too,” she said softly.

“I’ll be on the tarmac. I’ll be there okay? And we’ll fix your leg and you’ll walk and we’ll be okay. Okay?”

 

####

She rode in one of the five ambulances that arrived at the airport. A sixth vehicle came with them. For the body. For Lexie.

Karev rode in another ambulance. And Jackson and April came as well. But Callie was the first one out and she ignored some airport official to run to the opening door at the rear of the plane. Bailey tried to catch her as she run up the ramp but she only squeezed her shoulder and kept running.

Past Mark who was still completely out of it.

And to Arizona. Who had always claimed her metabolism processed most sedatives to quickly. It was true. She was groggy and watched Callie with glazed and hooded eyes.

She was so bruised. Dirty. Like death reanimated.

Callie ground to a halt in front of her then knelt. Behind her the others were climbing into the plane. Bailey was debriefing them and explaining how the patients would be transported. 

Callie quickly undid the straps holding her wife in place and pulled her hand out from beneath her blanket. She pressed her lips to the cool hand and stroked the least blemished part of Arizona’s face.

“You found me,” Arizona murmured painfully.

“Always,” Callie whispered.

And she resolved at that very moment, that she would never ever ever ever give up again. Because her wife was a superhero who could come back from the dead and the least Callie could do was have faith that she always would.


End file.
